At the beginning of this year, a dear friend of mine left his job for personal reasons and is currently unemployed. This got me thinking: What will my good friend’s next career move be? But more importantly, how can I use my critical thinking and research skills to help the anonymous readers of my blog who may or may not be in the same position?
Sure, you could choose one of those “safe” jobs like being a doctor, corporate lawyer, or Bill Gates, but remember that you only live once. Why not make a living doing something really different instead?
Below is a custom list of potential jobs that I’ve created for your next job search. Each job has a brief description along with an assessment of the following:
- Projected Salary – How much you will likely make doing this job.
- Ease of Entry – A numerical measure of barriers to entry, i.e. how hard it is to get started with the job, on a scale of 1 (nearly impossible) to 10 (super duper easy).
- Cool factor – How cool your job is, objectively speaking, on a scale of 1 (super lame) to 10 (super rad). This number also correlates to how likely it is that your job will help you get laid.
- Level of fun – How much projected fun you will have doing this job on a scale of 1 (boring as heck) to 10 (so fun that you may forget to pick up your paycheck).
- Uniqueness – How unique your job is on a scale of 1 (literally everybody does this) to 10 (you are literally the only person on Earth doing this).
- Soul healing – How much doing this job will benefit your soul on a scale of 1 (your soul will be absolutely destroyed by this job, guaranteed) to 10 (Mother Teresa-level goodness for your soul).
Alrighty then, fellow job seekers. Let’s get started.
1.) Professional Ear Hair Picker
When I was younger, my dad often asked me to use a pair of tweezers to pick his unsightly ear hairs every once in a while to help him look more presentable. It was boring and tedious, but he paid me a dime for every ear hair I pulled because it was hard for him to do it on his own. I no longer have the honor of yanking my dad’s ear hairs, but if this sounds like something you might be interested in doing for a living, go ahead and leave a comment at the bottom of this page and I will reach out to you for next steps if the position is still open.
- Salary: $25,000/year – N
ot the highest paying job, but it did help me get through college. - Ease of Entry: 5 – My dad has to kind of like you for this to work. As long as you didn’t vote for Trump and have ok-smelling breath, you should be good to go.
- Cool factor: 2 – I would hesitate to share this information on a first date.
- Level of fun: 3 – The job is highly repetitive, but the gratitude you receive and pleasure of mastering the art will make the job a lot of fun! I lied, it’s not that fun.
- Uniqueness: 10 – There can be only one.
- Soul healing: 5 – You may start to wonder what else you could be doing with your life, but hey, you’re helping someone, and that’s good.
2.) Professional Masturbator
“What?! People can’t do that for a living, can they?!” Dear reader, this is 2019–of
- Salary: Up to $12,000/year under the right conditions.
- Ease of Entry: 3 – You have to be a male to do this for a liv
ing, so that automatically eliminates half of the workforce from being candidates. You also have to be healthy, good-looking, young, and tall to be a desirable donor, making this line of work pretty gosh darn hard to get into. - Cool factor: 7 – If you’re careful with how you describe your profession, it can be a very cool job to have. Be sure to say something like, “I help women achieve the dream of having a baby,” and not, “I touch myself and sell baby batter for a living.”
- Level of fun: 10 – Every dude’s favorite hobby is polishing his hot dog. A job doesn’t get much more fun than this.
- Uniqueness: 3 – I don’t personally know any professional masturbators, so I’m slapping a plausible-sounding number on Uniqueness and calling it a day.
- Soul healing: 7 – Helping women is a noble deed, but the end of your workday may be accompanied by a feeling of emptiness (mostly in the balls).
3.) Criminal
Being a criminal is just that: Someone who commits crimes for a living. If you like living life on the edge, this is the job for you.
- Salary: $0 – Remember, kids: Crime doesn’t pay. Or maybe it does if you’re really good at it, I dunno.
- Ease of Entry: 10 – Ever jaywalk instead of waddling over to the crosswalk? Yep, you’re a criminal. It’s that easy!
- Cool factor: 8 – Let’s face it, a lot of movies and TV shows these days make criminals seem really cool. You may find yourself getting laid more often if you take up being a criminal as your full-time job.
- Level of fun: 5 – I’m sure being a criminal is fun, but this is balanced out by always having to worry about the law catching up to you one day.
- Uniqueness: 5 – There are a lot of criminals out there. Being one isn’t the best way to stand out from the crowd. Don’t count on interviewers who see this on your resume to be impressed with your uniqueness.
- Soul healing: 3 – If you’re commiting crimes for good like Robin Hood, that might help your soul. But in most cases, you’ll probably just feel bad.
4.) Bitcoin Investor
A Bitcoin investor is someone who buys Bitcoins, often with borrowed money or their entire life savings, and prays that their investment will appreciate in value. Investing in Bitcoin is generally a risky and unrewarding endeavor that could make you want to kill yourself, but if you can get over that part, it’s an okay way to start a mildly amusing conversation.
- Salary: $-100,000 – If, for example, you had started out investing in Bitcoin with $200,000 at the beginning of 2018, you would have lost approximately most of that money by the end of the year. Things could be different if you know exactly when to pull out, but few people can do it successfully and consistently. I recommend using a condom instead.
- Ease of Entry: 8 – You have to open an account somewhere and buy some Bitcoins, which is kind of annoying, but doable. You also need some money that you’re okay with losing.
- Cool factor: 9 – Just the word “cryptocurrency” is super awesome, and saying you’re affiliated in some way with the word will make some people think you’re a financial genius hacker or something. Merely telling people about your profession will give you enough social cred to make up for all the money you lost.
- Level of fun: 5 – If you have the right attitude, it can be a lot of fun to sit at your computer and watch the funny-looking line go down all day.
- Uniqueness: 6 – At a time when many people are jumping off the Bitcoin ship, sticking around in the Bitcoin market makes you sort of unique!
- Soul healing: 4 – Thanks to your purchase of Bitcoin, the person who sold their Bitcoin to you is a little less poor. It’s like donating money to a stranger, which will give you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.
5.) Car Salesman
This last job is one I put here because I promised five jobs in the title, and one of my new year’s resolutions is to cut my lying in half by the end of the year. With that said, I implore you to seriously consider literally any other job in this list before trying the car salesman route. This is not a better job than your current one.
- Salary: $41,000-ish is the median, apparently. But this figure will vary greatly depending on how much you’re willing to lie and manipulate people.
- Ease of Entry: 9 – Do you have a pulse? Are you comfortable with selling your soul to Satan? Congratulations and welcome to your new career.
- Cool factor: 1 – If you accidentally find yourself doing this for a living, you should probably just keep it to yourself.
- Level of fun: 3 – Despite all of the negatives associated with this job, you do get to learn some really cool things, like how to be a sleazy middleman and exercise maximum douchiness all day, every day.
- Uniqueness: 1 – On some days, I have trouble finding people who aren’t car salesmen.
- Soul healing: 1 – As a car salesman, you’re most definitely not helping anyone but yourself. If you are okay with continuing in this profession, you should seek professional help ASAP.
There you have it: Five–well, really, four–jobs that are better than your current job. Happy hunting!
Oh, and Happy New Year or whatever.